Of Interest 10.7.11: Erik van der Weijde's "This is not my Wife"

Marc Feustel of eyecurious selected artist / photographer Erik van der Weijde for our ongoing f100 series on recognizing photographers who merit more attention for their work. In his post for the series, Feustel wrote "Erik van der Weijde is a prolific bookmaker. His work is all about the book form...He has a mischievous and irreverent sense of humour but his books also force us to think about the many decisions that are taken when making a book and how images relate to each other within that form."

Two years after the collaboration "This is not my Son," van der Weijde and his small Dutch publishing company 4478zine are again working with Rollo-Press, a Swiss independent art publisher run by graphic designer Urs Lehni, this time in order to publish the book 'This is not my Wife.' The book will feature photographs van der Weijde has taken of his Brazilian wife and family over the past few years. 'This is not my Wife' celebrates the passions of both Erik and Urs: marriage, photography and publishing.

For this project they have started a crowdfunding campaign in order to partially finance its production, with a number of incentives for donation including unique drawings by Caetano, Erik's 10-year-old son, from Caetano's series 'This is not my Mother.' The campaign page can be explored here.

More photographs from the project below the break.

f100: Marie Quéau, Erik van der Weijde

© Marie Quéau, from the series "Gojira"

fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. A little more information on the project is available in the first post in the series here.

Today we resume the series after a summer break with responses from Marc Feustel.

We began the series with responses from Nicholas Nixon, Matt Johnston, Blake Andrews, John Edwin Mason, Aline Smithson, Colin Pantall, Michael Werner, Liza Fetissova, Laurence Salzmann, Bryan Formhals, Richard Mosse, Shane Lavalette, Amy Stein, Amani Willett, Wayne Ford, S. Billie Mandle, Leslie K. Brown and Gordon Stettinius.

Respondent: Marc Feustel is an independent curator, writer and blogger based in Paris. A specialist in Japanese photography, he is the author of Japan: A Self-Portrait, Photographs 1945-1964 (Flammarion, 2004) and the founder of Studio Equis (www.studioequis.net), an organisation devoted to broadening access to the visual arts between different cultures, with a focus on the relationship between Japan and the West. He writes for several photographic publications including European Photography, Foam, Fantom, Look and VU MAG and blogs at www.eyecurious.com.

Selections: Marie Quéau and Erik van der Weijde

I first discovered Marie Quéau's series Gojira at the Hyères Photography Festival. I was intrigued by the way the series combines a very wide range of different imagery to explore an abstract concept: the myth of Godzilla. Although she uses all sorts of images for this project—'classic' landscape, solarised abstraction, photo-montage, lo-fi gif—which come from sometimes totally unrelated sources, the result is extremely coherent and evocative without resorting to obvious references. The series is still a work in progress and it will be fascinating to see how it develops.

© Marie Quéau from the series "Gojira"

© Marie Quéau from the series "Gojira"

© Marie Quéau from the series "Gojira"

© Marie Quéau from the series "Gojira"

Erik van der Weijde is a prolific bookmaker (you can see a list of all his publications at www.4478zine.com). His work is all about the book form and his latest publication is a 5-part series of zines where he mixes his own images with work by five other photographers (Erik Kessels, Linus Bill, Takashi Homma, Eric Tabuchi and Paul Kooiker). He has a mischievous and irreverent sense of humour (the collaboration with Tabuchi is subtitled "modernist churches in France and the wife's butt") but his books also force us to think about the many decisions that are taken when making a book and how images relate to each other within that form.

© Erik Kessels / Erik van der Weijde kids with nosebleeds and black eyes on polaroid and a lady with her poodle.

© Linus Bill / Erik van der Weijde Linus’ family in Switzerland and Eriks family in Brazil.

© Takashi Homma / Erik van der Weijde the cat and a smoking father-in-law.

© Eric Tabuchi / Erik van der Weijde  modernist churches in France and the wife’s butt. 

© Paul Kooiker / Erik van der Weijde a russian wolf having an identity crisis and a sleeping boy.